Samsung Series 5, 7 AiOs Understand Hand Gestures From 3 Feet Away

Samsung's new Series 5 and Series 7 AiOs feature Windows 8 and touch-screens that don't need to be touched. They understand five gestures from up to 3 feet away.

Samsung introduced three new all-in-one (AiO) PCs from the IFA 2012 trade show in Berlin Aug. 28. Thin and "space-agey," they're designed for family rooms and kitchen counters. A 21.5-inch Series 5 sits atop four metal legs that look as though they might walk off a counter, while two Series 7 models, one with a 23.6-inch display and another at 21.5 inches, sit atop more solid metal loops.
All-feature touch-screens with resolutions of 1920 by 1080, support 10-finger multi-touch input, have slim bezels that allow the displays to take up as much real estate as possible and are designed to run Microsoft's Windows 8, once it arrives Oct. 26.

Beyond the pinching and swiping one can do with 10 fingers, the PCs also respond to five "hand-gesture-recognition features," as Samsung calls them-gestures that can be performed in front of the screen from up to 3 feet away.

"Users can swipe right or left to turn the pages of an ebook or recipe, all without touching the screen," Samsung said in a statement. "Users can also rotate their palm clockwise or counterclockwise to change the volume while watching a movie, close their hand to click on an option in a program or simply wave their hands to stop watching a movie."
Increasing the likelihood of users having hands too food-stained to tap a display with, the new AiOs ships with an exclusive Jamie Oliver's Recipes app that includes recipes with step-by-step instructions and high-definition photographs.
For users more inclined to set up a PC in front of a couch, the larger Series 7 features a viewing angle up to 178 degrees. On the others, the angle is 170 and 160 degrees.

The 27-inch Series 7 also features an Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 (double-data rate type 3) system memory, a 1TB hard drive and an Advanced Micro Device Radeon HD 7850M graphics processor.
The 23-inch Series 7 features an Intel Core i5, 6GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 memory, a 1TB hard-disk drive and an Intel HD Graphics 4000 processor. The graphics are the same on the 21.5-inch Series 5, but the processor is an Intel Core i3, there are 4GB of DDR3 system memory and a 500GB hard-disk drive.
All three PCs include DVD +/-RW Super Multi Dual Layer optical drives, HD audio, 1.3-megapixel cameras for the hand-gesture-recognition features, WiFi and Bluetooth support, High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) and USB 2.0 and 3.0 slots, and wireless keyboards and mice. (A perk of the four legs on the Series 5 is that the keyboard can be tucked between them under the monitor.)
"The expansion of our AiO line speaks to the success we've had in the PC market over the past year," Todd Bouman, vice president of product marketing for Samsung's Enterprise Business Division, said in a statement. "Both of these new models take Samsung's convergence technologies to the next level, completing the home computing experience by connecting the PC to other devices in the home environment."
With Windows 8, the new Samsung devices will arrive Oct. 26-the Series 5 starting at $749 and the Series 7 ranging from $1,099 to $1,699.

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.